The Timetrade Side Stories

WARNING: There is a major spoiler at the end for Etaín's character backstory. If you mind, stop at the paragraph starting with "To this day..."

Pipe Dream

Etaín never expected to fall in love with her husband. Even if her future self traveled back in time and told her that she would marry this man and bear his child, she would have laughed at the impossibility of such a statement. Everyone who knew Etaín would have laughed right alongside her, saying that she had a better chance of adopting and raising one of the many orphans running around than marrying Gilbert Tyrrhenus.

It was funny how fate worked, even in a world where mankind had learned to traverse the stars and leap into alternate planes of existence. The simplest parts of her married life were the ones that made her the happiest, not the possibility of newly developed weapons from dimension HK-470 that could secure one of the Capitol's supply bases for the rebel army's use. Those were the types of news that should have made her happy, not her husband's elated smile upon finding out that they were going to have a child.

Gilbert seemed unconcerned, or rather, wasn't thinking at all of the possibility that their future child could be orphaned just as they had been so many years ago. The moment her doctor friend told her the news, Etaín felt vaguely sick like she had been stabbed in the gut and had food poisoning at the same time. In fact, the pleasant smile she had worn while speaking to her long-time friend faded to a blank, half pleading and half panicked expression.

"It's all up to you," her friend had said with a sympathetic smile. "You're an important member of the resistance, but I don't think anyone who matters would begrudge you if you wanted to go through with this. Future generations and all."

Except they both knew just how empty that expression really was in these times. The sky had begun to fracture three years ago - Gilbert himself had traveled to the future and saw what would become of their world. He refused to tell Etaín the details, though she had read them all in his mission report later on.

What was the point in having a child who would never grow old? If the world was to end during the prime years of next generation's lives, what was the point in giving birth to them only to show them this ugly, wretched, hopeless world? Etaín blinked slowly as she examined her husband's bright blue eyes shine with the promise of a child in her belly. He had dark circles under his eyes and his usually bright red hair was the color of a rusted coin, but he was smiling like he had seen the sun for the first time in his life.

"Is this a good thing, Gil?" Etaín asked hesitantly, looking across the room to the empty metal walls of their narrow apartment. Since they both worked directly for the resistance, they were afforded fairly nice accommodations compared to the rest of the citizens. As a little girl growing up surrounded by the ragged mountain ranges and depleted forests of her hometown, she would never have imagined earning this much luxury in her life.

He had a puzzled look on his face as he walked over and knelt in front of her - she was sitting on the edge of the ratty excuse for a couch that someone had found and shoved in here. She couldn't help but smile weakly at him, reaching out to vaguely brush her fingertips along the edges of his hair.

"Of course it is," he said in that normal, infuriatingly righteous voice that she both hated and loved. He acted so stupidly innocent, like he couldn't possibly be wrong and everyone else was a bit crazy for not understanding that simple fact. "We're gonna have a baby! Isn't that amazing? Why aren't you excited?"

Etaín groaned. "Stop sounding like that," she demanded, glaring at him. Even though he was physically occupying a lower position compared to her, Etaín somehow felt like she was losing ground here.

"Stop sounding like what? That I'm excited? Look, even if you aren't excited, I can't stop what I'm feeling."

"Like a kicked puppy," Etaín shot back. "Seriously, you went from being an arrogant jerk to a...a..."

"Cute jerk?"

"Manipulative jerk," she corrected. "The kicked puppy face is only cute on kids. Not grown men."

Gilbert laughed and stood to his full height, which was honestly only a little taller than Etaín, who had always towered over the other girls she knew as a child. He ran a hand through his dusty red hair, smiling even though his entire arm was actually trembling a bit, and not from excitement.

Etaín sighed and shifted over, making enough room for him to sit beside her. "Come, you look like you're about to fall over. Was the last jump rough?"

Her husband breathed a quiet sigh, taking a graceful-for-a-nearly-dead-person seat on the couch. "I still love how they call it the timetrade," he commented with a quiet laugh of mirth. "They're just alternate dimensions. And they all suck. We found the tech we wanted, though, and we lost a few good guys in that world."

The thin smile he gave her made Etaín feel even worse about the child in her stomach. Not because she hated it after just discovering that it was living inside her, but because she almost wanted to keep it just to see Gilbert smile like he used to back when they were kids.

She turned away from him. She knew why he liked the idea of a child so much despite the truly horrendous things he had to see whenever the resistance army sent him dimension jumping with one of their newly acquired timepieces. Gilbert had never been as pessimistic as herself, not by a long shot.

It was still a wonder to her and her surviving friends that they even got along. But Gilbert had, a long time ago, said he would never call someone who was not his equal in strength a friend, lover, or anything else.

Gilbert didn't have many friends. At least, not until they got really involved in the resistance. He had more nowadays, but in the past, there had been only a few people he really trusted with his back. And somehow, Etaín had become one of them. The dark haired, spindly-legged girl who used to get into the nastiest, pettiest fights with the most arrogant kid in town, actually ended up falling in love with him.

Fate was a funny thing.

"So, are you keeping it?" Gilbert asked brightly.

Etaín did not have just one reason for marrying Gilbert Tyrrhenus, just as she did not have just one reason for keeping the baby. It was a myriad of little things like the glint in his blue eyes, the hope in his smile when she told him the news, or even his ridiculously self-righteous attitude that made him disobey commanding officers even if it meant a beating.

"Yes," she nodded. "I will. So you better not die on me, you hear? If I'm going to keep it and go through the hell of bring it into this world, we're going to raise it together."

Gilbert smiled. "Of course! As if I'd be a deadbeat father - in the literal sense of the word, too."

There were many things about her husband that she could not change, like his sense of adventure that led him to alternate dimensions or his haughty tone when he started to accumulate one too many accomplishments, but Etaín was sure that there were also things about herself that Gilbert both loved and hated.

To this day, she knows that it was her compete willingness to throw away a precious life if Gilbert had not been so enthusiastic about the two of them becoming parents. She knows that if she were given the same options again, she would never be willing to part with her child, but perhaps she is only able to say that in retrospect.

She also knows why Gilbert wanted to be a father. And really, she can forgive him for it completely, and has sworn to both her dead husband and child that she would never again bring another life into this world.

Sometimes it bothers her. Other times she forces herself to think of all the other worlds in which her child and possibly even Gilbert lived through that time. She's just going to have to be satisfied with that much because it is more than she deserves.

It's a shame he's dead, because Gilbert was really fun to write. Like most of the navigators, he is based on a historical/mythological figure which is why he is so over the top...he has a right to be in his source material. He originally had blond hair and blue eyes, but I realized he might look a little too similar to some canon characters so I changed it to red and blue. Honestly, Etaín is the only one who can put up with him long enough to conceive a child with him. He's good-looking, but just ends up chasing (almost) everyone away with how annoying he is, haha.

Also, both of them had bad reasons for wanting a kid (Gilbert's is less obvious, but just as bad as Etaín's). But they were young at this time. About 22 years old.

No updates for a little while (more than a week probably) because I have to study for finals and write papers and such.